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Alternadad Reviews

Booklist
"Pop-culture writer Pollack has a reputation as a fun-loving, party-going hipster. For years he danced awkwardly from relationship to relationship, until he found the person he was looking for and settled down (sort of). Now we learn his deep, dark secret: he loves his little boy, loves him with a goofy, all-consuming love that makes him (and the reader) break out into smiles nearly constantly. This book, which recounts the author's transition from hipster guy to hipster dad, is both laugh-out-loud funny and cry-softly poignant. Written in Pollack's in-your-face, no-holds-barred style, it just may be the most offbeat book about parenting ever written, and fans of the author's previous, equally idiosyncratic book--including that pop-culture staple The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature (2000)--will be utterly enraptured."

Texas Monthly
"Engaging...Pollack is...America's postmodern Erma Bombeck."

Los Angeles Times

Revelatory and funny...He writes deliciously of his son's malapropisms and imaginary playmates, of the intense satisfaction they get joking, moshing and telling stories. More traditional dads surely love their kids just as much, but rarely has the bond felt more moving than it does here."

Slate.com
"Very funny...Pollack shouldn't simply be lumped in with a spurious hipster parenting movement. His book reveals that the core aim of fatherhood has barely budged: provide food, clothing, shelter."

San Francisco Bay Guardian
"Alternadad is more than just the work of a proud papa toking from a vaporizer. Pollack proves himself capable of handling serious subject matter."

The New York Times Book Review
"Amusingly cranky...The hilarious and emotional all-family brouhaha that erupts over the topic of circumcision will resonate with many, as will Pollack's description of the conflicted feelings all parents have at one time or another. "

The Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Bracingly honest, and so full of love it could just as easily go in the Parenting section, next to Anne Lamont's classic, "Operating Instructions"... "Alternadad" gives comfort, with a bonus of lots of laughs, to every parent who is just doing the best he can. "

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Alternadad In The News

The San Francisco Chronicle covers a super-fun Alternadad party.

Time Magazine
"The Howl of this movement is Neal Pollack's new memoir Alternadad. Pollack, a novelist and erstwhile punk-rock frontman, sets out to make sure that in a world of Disney and Barney, his baby Elijah, now 5, will be cool (and thus that Dad will remain so). He home schools the boy in hipster culture, taking him to blues shows and playing him a curated collection of punk. Goodbye, Baby Mozart; hello, Baby Ramone.
Full disclosure: I have two young sons, and if anything, Pollack gets my experience unsettlingly right."

It's not a trend until USA TODAY says so.

A Satirist Shows His Soft Side--A brief excerpt from my cover profile in Poets & Writers, which calls Alternadad "a carefully considered and well-drawn portrait of modern parents."

"Daddy coolest"--A Los Angeles Times profile that calls this site "hilarious" and says that Elijah is a "precocious child with the face of a Botticelli and the temperament of Dennis The Menace."

Alternadad, Alternafood--a lovely food-based profile in the Minneapolis City Paper by the brilliant Dara Moskowitz.

An interview with Gothamist.

An interview with Radar.

The Boston Herald smells a trend.
Largehearted Boy's book notes, featuring my "soundtrack" to Alternadad.

Great article in the Nashville Tennessean about rock music for kids, featuring lots of quotes from Dan Zanes and Jason Ringenberg, and a short piece of Gen-X punditry from me.

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